Quite curious how this happened...
Congress on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to override President Obama’s veto of legislation that would allow 9/11 victims’ families to sue the Saudi Arabian government over its alleged support for the terrorists who carried out the attacks.
It is the first override of Obama’s presidency.
An amazing essay. Coates reflects on how someone's guilt or innocence--such a simple concept--quickly becomes layered and complex because of the world we live in. A great read for mulling over issues of race and the justice system. And a good reminder of how important careful thought and empathy are.
The confusion and hollowness of both political parties has not been a secret. Citizens left, right, and center have been giving up on electoral politics and the two-party system for decades. The nation’s largest political party is the “don’t bother” party—roughly half of the adult population who see no reason to vote, and nothing in it for them. Instead of scolding them, an active political party might look into the cause-and-effect of dysfunctional democracy and try to change it.
Hear, hear.
Jobs that can be performed by machines eventually will be performed by machines. That’s been the steady march of progress since the dawn of the industrial revolution. But it really is extraordinary for a CEO to flatly declare that he considers the company’s workforce not to be an asset, but rather a stopgap measure he’s committed to eliminate. Say what you want about the politics of his bluntness, but he certainly deserves points for honesty.
Starting later this month, Uber will allow customers in downtown Pittsburgh to summon self-driving cars from their phones, crossing an important milestone that no automotive or technology company has yet achieved. Google, widely regarded as the leader in the field, has been testing its fleet for several years, and Tesla Motors offers Autopilot, essentially a souped-up cruise control that drives the car on the highway. Earlier this week, Ford announced plans for an autonomous ride-sharing service. But none of these companies has yet brought a self-driving car-sharing service to market.
COHEN: Yea well before 1988 it was the League of Women Voters, which was a truly nonpartisan group that sponsored the debates. And the Commission on Presidential Debates was a construct created by the chairs of the Democratic and Republican parties. And at the news conference in 1987 as they were announcing their formation, they both commented this was the Republican chair Frank Fahrenkopf hes still the co-chair on the Commission on Presidential Debates and the then Democratic chair Paul Kirk, they both said yea basically this thing was set up and theyre not going to look kindly on ever including third party candidates.
It was set up, the Commission on Presidential Debates. Its not an official body. Its no more federal than Federal Express. Its a self-appointed group that took power away from the nonpartisan League of Women Voters. They have now done 7 presidential elections and the main purpose for the commission is to make sure that third party candidates, as popular as they are this year, will not be included in the debate.
Last week Aetna, one of the country’s largest insurance companies, announced that it was cutting back its participation in the health care exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). With several other major insurers also cutting back their participation, there will be very limited competition in many markets. This prospect has supporters of the ACA worried and opponents gleefully looking forward to the day when millions may lose their insurance.
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There are two simple ways to address this problem. For one, the insurers are still making money in the individual market outside of the exchanges. We could simply make participation in the exchanges a condition for participating in the individual markets. This in effect tells the insurers that if they want to make money insuring healthy people, they will also have to bear the risk of insuring less healthy people.
The other route would be to do what President Obama originally proposed in his 2008 campaign: set up a Medicare-type public option in the exchanges. This would ensure that everyone had an efficient low cost plan which they could buy into.
The Defense Department’s Inspector General, in a June report, said the Army made $2.8 trillion in wrongful adjustments to accounting entries in one quarter alone in 2015, and $6.5 trillion for the year. Yet the Army lacked receipts and invoices to support those numbers or simply made them up.
Nothing seems to be a good predictor of whether or not someone turns to extreme political violence, though there are a few interesting themes amongst those who do...
The jihadi employment form asked the recruits, on a scale of 1 to 3, to rate their knowledge of Islam. And the Islamic State applicants, herded into a hangar somewhere at the Syria-Turkey border, turned out to be overwhelmingly ignorant.
The extremist group could hardly have hoped for better.
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The findings address one of the most troubling questions about IS recruitment in the United States and Europe: Are disaffected people who understand Shariah more prone to radicalization? Or are those with little knowledge of Islam more susceptible to the group's radical ideas that promote violence?
The documents suggest the latter. The group preys on this religious ignorance, allowing extremists to impose a brand of Islam constructed to suit its goal of maximum territorial expansion and carnage as soon as recruits come under its sway.